


Etudes

by Maugris



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon and AU, HP AU, Multi, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:40:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4652625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maugris/pseuds/Maugris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of thematically linked scenes and character studies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fall

**Author's Note:**

> I've been challenging myself to write quicker and with less neurotic perfectionism, so this is the result. Every chapter will be 3-4 short scenes, written in one sitting and linked by a theme. There's no other connection between the scenes, which may be canon or AU and set at any point in time.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any characters or themes you'd like to see! I'd love to get a few more of these done soon -- trying to train myself to write like LIGHTNING.

FALL

1.

After they bring Lincoln to the dropship and leave him in that upstairs room -- chained up, an object instead of a person, an art installation or an expensive pet -- it's impossible to think of anything else. Part of this is because no one will let her forget -- when Lincoln is awake he is screaming, and when he is unconscious they talk about him, about what happened to him and how to save him, about what saving him will mean for their relationship with the grounders -- and part of it is just the thought of him there, the nagging sad irony of it. It's the second time they've had him tied and mute and hurting. For the second time Octavia sits beside him and watches like her whole world hangs in the balance.

The grounder healer lurks back at the wall and he looks at Clarke like he doesn't quite know what to make of her. "I'll go talk with the Commander," she says, to him and Octavia both.

Nyko says nothing aloud, but his face clearly says: _it’s your own funeral._

Octavia looks up at her sharply, and there are no tears in her eyes but her cheeks are lined with snail-shiny dried tracks. "If you leave him, he could die," he says.

"My mom is better than me," Clarke says. "She'll save him. I promise she will."

Octavia holds her gaze for a moment and then nods, turning back to Lincoln. He's quiet now, lying limp and exhausted on the floor. If he lives, will he remember all this? He'd hate it, dignified man that he was (is, that he is) -- he'd hate being made so animal.

Clarke turns to go and wishes that she hadn't made Octavia any promises. She's made so many lately that she hasn't been able to keep. And it's true that her mother is ten times the medic Clarke herself is -- she's had decades more experience, and no little jailtime vacations. But it's hard to delegate things, these days. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

But this could be good for them. It's the first opportunity for peace with the grounders she's been able to dig up since Anya died and their tentative truce with her. If Lincoln lives, this will be good for them. The grounders need this as much as her people do.

Clarke thinks: _God, I hope he lives,_ like a fervent little prayer, and tries not to ask herself why. She has better things to do with her time than that.

 

2\. 

After Clarke leaves, the seasons change. It's something Bellamy has read about, but he never really expected to see it for himself. The trees are spectacular: towers of orange and gold, single loose leaves fluttering in a wind that's started to turn cold. He has a perfect view of the forest from where he's standing, perched on a ledge by the fence, watching the treeline for Miller and the others returning from their hunt.

They're not unusually late -- Miller had radioed in an hour ago, and returning hunt parties were often overburdened and slow -- but Bellamy worries, these days. He wants all his people to come home.

"Hey," Raven says, at his elbow.

Bellamy doesn't startle, because it's impossible for Raven to sneak up on people anyway. He just turns to look at her, admiring the way the sun slants over her dark hair and the curving bridge of her nose. She's a beautiful girl -- he's always thought so.

"Hey," he says back.

"What're you looking for?"

She hops up beside him, squinting out at the yellow-fringed trees and the dark ribbon of river beyond them. The air is sharp with a particular warm, damp smell, like things beginning to rot.

"Miller," Bellamy lies.

"Yeah, sure," Raven says, because of course she knows who he's always looking for, but she also has more tact than to say it aloud.

They stand there in silence for a little bit longer, watching the woods. Nothing moves, but it's good to watch all the same. It wasn't so long ago that they had sentries posted to warn them about grounder movements around the camp, not so long ago that the threat of war was so overwhelming.

Now they are not so much at peace as they are _not quite at war._ It's a small difference, but important.

But still, anything could come out from the woods: Miller's group and their heap of carcasses. Grounders on a tear, not satisfied with the revenge they'd got. Jaha and Murphy, wreathed in gold and fat with the bounty of their City of Light. Anyone, really.

"Come on," Raven says, her hand at his elbow. "Let's head back -- standing here watching won't make them come back any faster. Plus, Monty's looking for volunteers to test his new batch of moonshine."

Monty made a bit too much moonshine these days, Bellamy thought, and not quite enough of it was earmarked for public consumption. But it wasn't bad enough yet for him to intervene. Everyone had their ways of getting by.

"Sure," he says. "Just a minute."

Everyone's coming back, he thinks, breathing deep of this outside air, that dark leafrot smell. The worst is past. The worst is past. There are no more ducts for him to crawl through, no more cages, no more switches to pull. The worst is past, and they'll just go on.

"Okay," he says to Raven, who isn't looking at him anymore. She's staring down into the forest herself, watching a stir of off-color and movement that is someone breaking through the treeline. There's this absurd little lift in Bellamy's chest, a catch in his throat --

"I'll never get used to eating something with two heads," Raven says, as Miller and his team walk into the clearing with a dead deer suspended from a buck pole. Its head looks normal from here, but her point stands.

Bellamy lets out a sharp breath, shakes his head once. He'll just shrug it off and keep on, because there's no time for weakness or wanting. He's said as much to others, in the past, and he's no hypocrite. He's not the type of guy to turn his back on the people who need him.

"I'm going down to help him," he says to Raven, and jumps off the ledge to a little slope of sliding scree, slipping down the hill toward Miller and the great empty wood behind him.

 

3.

If he tries hard enough, Murphy can remember back to a time before pain. He remembers the Ark -- its hot metal smells and stale air and the smooth characterless cell that he'd lived in for years before the earth. John Mbege and his slow smiles and the way that he'd been able to predict his days up there with careful applications of sullen silence and quick, brilliant violence.

But it's harder and harder to remember anything now. It's behind a wall, a cotton-batting barrier that makes everything Before seem like something he saw in a recording once. Some other John did those things. Some other Murphy lived that life.

He's always in pain, now. The scars on his back and chest ache and pull, and some little bones in his hands and feet never set right. They sit at uneasy angles under his skin and he can't predict when they'll flare up in pain, whitehot and breathtaking.

His fingernails aren't growing back the same, either, but at least they're growing back. Things could be worse. Really, things are okay.

The bunker is quiet, quiet. He learns how to control the dead man's music and spends vast hours just tipped back on the couch listening. It's all of a kind, really, a bunch of shouting anthems about people doing bad things or having bad things done to them, and it should probably speak to him but it doesn't. He likes the rhythms, though, the deep driving pace that sets his heartbeat in line. It's soothing.

But there are no people. He goes out onto the sand and fishes at the edge of the water and looks for anyone: refugees from the camp, grounders searching for this promised paradise everyone seems to know about -- he even looks for Jaha, though he's not sure what he would do if the man ever came back. He thinks back on it, sometimes, when he's lying sleepless in a dead man's bed. Jaha had believed he had a destiny, and Jaha had sacrificed others so that Murphy could live. It's strange and he doesn't know how to think about it, because maybe the other John had people looking out for him sometimes but this Murphy is the kind of cancer that needs to be cut out for the body to thrive. 

Eventually, after much thought and many glasses of old scotch, he decides that he doesn't like it. Jaha was a stupid crazy asshole, and now maybe Murphy owes him or something. Life debt -- that's a thing, right? Save somebody's life so that you'll own them forever.

Sometimes, he watches the man dying in the video and he wonders where the body is. More often, he wonders where the gun is, whether it still works. Whether it has any bullets left, and what he would use them on.

_I don't want to die alone,_ he'd told Raven once. It was a stupid thing to say, but sometimes it gets stuck in his head and there's too much meaning there. All these implications that New Murphy doesn't want to ( _can't_ ) unpack, because he's a simple creature and all that's left to him is a steady breath _in-out_ and the relentless beat of his heart. He lives. He goes on.

When Murphy dreams, it's not about the grounders or his parents or the taste of thick blood in his mouth. He dreams placid lovely dreams about flying, launching up from the sand and skimming over the ocean and away from all this. He sees fish and the dark shapes of larger things beneath the waves. He sees people with scaled tails and faces that look almost familiar.

At some point in the dream, the air becomes too thin to breathe. Maybe he's flown too high, or maybe he's reached the end of some invisible tether. Whatever the reason, he always starts to falter, dipping too low, spots in his vision and this horrible pressure building in his chest --

And then it's, as they say, _a short drop and a sudden stop,_ and he wakes breathless and panicked, clutching his hands to his throat. Every time, he expects to find something there -- a seatbelt, a seaweed rope -- and his fingers find nothing but too-smooth nerveless skin.

The walls of the bunker are thick and soundproof, so he has to imagine the sound of the tide lapping at the beach. He sets his breath and his heart to it until he's calm again. He thinks, _I don't want to die alone._

His fingers still feel, sometimes, like they're clenched in the hot stretch of plastic he'd clamped over that boy's head.


	2. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Clarke and Raven
> 
> 2\. Monty/Miller
> 
> 3\. Lincoln

1.

"This is so fucked up," Raven says. She's absorbed in her work, fussing with some valves and gears and whatever all she works with. It all goes over Clarke's head.

She and Raven are more the same than they are different. They're thinkers, doers -- they plan and then act and save feelings for later. If you pretend at confidence for long enough then it's there, naturally, whenever you need it.

But confidence hadn't prepared for what they found on the ground. Clarke had been ready for radiation -- she'd been prepared for death or illness or starvation. Maybe she'd hoped for a friendly Earth but she hadn't really expected it. So she'd been ready to die, to hack and claw and starve. 

But instead, there's this: a pair of thriving societies, a war fought with spears and poison gas and subjugation. She wasn't ready for that. No one was.

"I know," she says to Raven, watching her quick hands moving. "Once we have the fog down, we can move in. We can settle all this." 

Sometimes she wonders what they expected, back in the Ark -- what plan they formed in sanitized space about what their criminal children would do on the wild and irradiated earth. If they'd really expected them to form a cute little utopia, to scratch crops from the dirt and sit around singing and making daisy chains.

"How can people do this to each other," she says, more to herself than to Raven.

"Because people suck," Raven says, and twists something that lets off a loud hiss of pressure. "Aha!"

Clarke looks dubiously down at the table, at the little bits and pieces that don't look any different to her. "Was that a good thing? Because it didn't sound good."

"No worries," Raven says. "No hull breaches down here."

Clarke laughs and says, "Well, that's one good thing about all this," and settles down to watch Raven work.

For all of the horrors they've faced on the ground, it's hard to think about going back to space. Even before she had been in prison, it was still a prison in its own right, after all. Walls all around and rules so codified they were practically religion.

Now they've felt this kind of freedom -- and for the first time in her life, Clarke feels like she matters. The decisions she makes have weight. The group of them, once one hundred and now less, once criminals and now pioneers -- at least they're deciding their own fates, as best they can.

"Hold that for me, will you?" Raven asks, and Clarke turns back to the work at hand.

2.

Monty's a pretty smart guy, when it comes to his particular sphere of expertise. Like -- he knows machines and he knows code. He knows organic compounds and how they react with the delicate structures of the human brain. In short: he knows which ones will kill you and which ones will just fuck you up enough to obscure all your problems.

It used to bother him, seeing all these kids and trying to forget the things he knows about them. Kids on pills say all sorts of things they wouldn't admit to anyone else -- sensitive things, personal things. It doesn't bother him anymore, though. It's become a sort of file card he has on everyone, something that shuffles up to the front of his mind when he considers them and then falls back to the pile when they're gone. Monty has a very organized mind, after all.

His file card on Nathan Miller says: _dead mother. Father in the guard. Deep resentment of authority. Quick and skilled but sometimes wants to be slow and dumb._

This is useful information. It helped him, back in space, pick out the kind of downers that would put Miller into a quiet, peaceful meditative state for a few hours. It helps him, on the ground, figure out things to say when the two of them are alone, sharing moonshine and a single hard roll-out mattress on the ground.

There's a kind of savage quiet to Miller, a need to do good and go unrecognized for it. He hates the spotlight and he hates praise. It's weird but Monty sort of understands it. For Miller, that is. Monty would never have worked as hard as he has and never done so much if he wanted to go unrecognized. He's good, but he's not selfless.

"There's too much pressure," Miller says, licking a lazy line up Monty's collarbone. "Now they expect things of me. Before, anything I did was a surprise, you know? No one expects things of a fuckup except to fuck up some more."

Monty wants to say something stupid and sappy, maybe _I don't expect anything of you because you defy all my expectations._ But he says nothing, just sucks in a low lungful of air and lets his eyes flutter closed as Miller trails kisses up to his mouth.

It's a comfort, this. They don't talk about Mount Weather and they don't talk about the way Jasper avoids eye contact with Monty, the way he's lost weight and wanders camp like a lost dog. Between the two of them there is warmth and quiet, the solidity of two bodies lying together and trying to become one.

"We were shitty kids, weren't we," Monty says later, warm even in the cool air of autumn edging to winter. He's thinking about the little file cards, and how they're really just his methodical mind discovering and exploiting weaknesses. He said it was to better help people but he'd enjoyed it, hadn't he?

"Nah, just you," Miller says. "I've always been good as gold."

Monty snorts a laugh and mentally adjusts his file card to say _snarky little shit._ There's things to be done, somewhere, surely -- but he makes no move to get up. He buries his nose in Miller's neck and thinks that there's time enough for this, now. There's time enough to be slow and dumb, two bodies at rest. Content with each other.

3\. 

Someone must have told him about the fog, back when he was a boy -- he wasn't born with the knowledge. But Lincoln doesn't remember not knowing. Every child in TonDC knew the sound of the horn -- one blast, two -- and they knew to flee the fog.

An older boy, Rafe, used to gather the younger ones around him and tell them that the Mountain Men shot the fog from their mouths and their asses, that when it rolled through the valley it was only the mountain farting. Most of them laughed -- Lincoln laughed. It was funny, after all, and there was of course something poisonous about these people alone in their mountain. But then Rafe was caught out in the open when he was just thirteen, and Lincoln had to watch him die.

Lincoln had been given a spear when he was eleven, because he was big for his age and very strong. But no one expected him to fight. He went with the patrols as a lookout and a back to bear a load -- he watched and he learned. There were ten others, all around his age or a few years older, and the seasoned warriors laughed and traded them back and forth and pretended to hate them, called them useless and worse. All in all, it was a wonderful time in his life. To finally feel part of a group and to have a tool to call his own. He was useful.

He had one friend -- her name was Caro -- and Rafe was not his friend, but was something close. Rafe was arrogant and loud, but he was also good, skilled in a way that Lincoln could only dream about. _He was older,_ Lincoln used to say to himself as they lay in the firelight, watching the stars overhead. He'd had years more to practice and one day Lincoln would be that good, too.

In the fall, the eleven trainees were brought along on a week-long scouting mission, the longest Lincoln had ever been away from his home. Their group left TonDC in the pink of early morning and at first he tried to be serious, to look for game or for the enemy, but there was no urgency in any of the adult faces. They went nowhere in a hurry. The scouts went and returned and the older warriors took long leisurely meal breaks in the dappled sunshine.

"They're not looking for anything," Caro said with a small frown. She was a serious girl. "They just want us to think they are."

Rafe clapped her on the shoulder and said, "It's our first time out this far. Would you prefer to be in real danger?"

"No," she said. "Of course not. It's just that it seems they don't trust us."

"They don't," Lincoln said, and they all lapsed into quiet.

And things stayed easy for several days. The trainees were put in charge of bringing in dinner, and the first day they went hungry on a brace of pheasants and a thin rabbit but then the whole group cheered them the next, when they walked back to the fire with a field-dressed boar over their shoulders.

And then, one day --

They had taught him the signs as a boy, as soon as he could sit up and remember the things he'd been told. The animals will run, they said. The light will seems strange, thick and diffuse. The air will smell sweet.

The fog roils over the ground like a herd of beasts, they said. But if you've seen it, then it's probably too late.

So he knew the signs, but he'd never had to recognize them before. He was only squinting up at the canopy one morning, thinking that perhaps there was a little campfire smoke in his eyes -- they stung a bit, watered a bit, and the air --

"Run," roared one of the older warriors, and the group scattered in three directions, running away from the wind. Lincoln didn't know where he was going, he only knew that he was running, that there was a broad back in front of him and he had to follow it if he wanted to live.

_Run to the river,_ he repeated in his head. _Run to cover. Run underground. Only these might save you._

They'd run perhaps ten minutes when the man he'd been trailing spun and dropped to the ground, fumbling for some catch covered by sod and leaves. He wrenched up a metal lid from the ground and dropped into it, not bothering to place his feet on the ladder.

"Come on," he barked, his voice strange and tinny from the underground space. "Idiots! Get down here if you don't want the meat stripped from your skulls."

So Lincoln dropped and scrabbled at the lip of the hole and he leapt to the floor beneath with a bone-jarring thud. Two others followed after -- a woman who was a friend of his mother's and then, after her, Caro. Just a slip of a girl -- Lincoln hadn't known she could run so hard.

He caught her up in a hard hug and normally she would have fought it, slapping at his shoulders and telling him _Lincoln, you sentimental idiot, put me down._ But she didn't fight it. She clung limply to his arms and they stood quiet and shaking as the man wrenched the lid closed again. Far away, they heard the low blasts of a horn.

"Late," the man said. He was not so much older than them, the one who'd taught them field bandages and poisons, and his name was Nyko. He spun to look at Lincoln and Caro and barked, "When do you blow the horn?"

"As soon as you smell the fog," Lincoln recited dully. "Even if it means your death. Because maybe then your people will live."

"Good," Nyko said, and collapsed in a heavy sit to the ground. He tugged his knees to his chin and sat breathing heavily into them.

It was so different from the way things had been for the past few days -- everyone so effortlessly competent, smiling tolerantly at the young trainees as they found new and untested ways to screw up. Seeing Nyko afraid was strange, it was intolerable. Lincoln hadn't been scared before -- he'd been too busy running, mind flickering and cataloging, looking for safety. He hadn't had time to be afraid.

But then, looking at his mentor sitting breathless and shaking on the ground, he was afraid.

He and Caro found a corner of the shelter to sit in, pressed shoulder-to-hip and not talking. It was enough to be near and warm and safe. Eventually, the two older warriors went and stood near the ladder to the ground and talked quietly, too quietly to overhear more than a scattered word or two. The set of their bodies was stiff and defensive.

By the time he thought to wonder at how long they'd been down there, his legs were stiff and numb from the cold floor and Nyko was pushing back the lid to the surface.

"Come on," he said roughly. "The fog's passed us."

The four of them climbed slowly back to the forest floor and Lincoln emerged into pale sunshine, his eyes squeezed to slits in anticipation of the first hit of stinging, poisonous air. But there was nothing. Just a faint, lingering sweetness.

"It's all right," he said, to Caro and also to convince himself. "It's safe."

They didn't bother to try reuniting with the rest of the group -- how would they? they'd scattered to the winds -- instead, they mutely turned in the direction of home and marched at brutal, relentless pace. No one said anything; no one led or set the pace or goaded them on. It was just that they all wanted to be home, right then. 

In a day and a half, they were back on familiar ground. It had taken them four to cover that distance on the way out -- but then, it had been a different time.

They weren't more than an hour's walk from home when they found a second group of survivors. At first Lincoln assumed they were lamed game, something bold and loud like boar -- they walked heavily and made such sick animal groans. At his side, the color dropped out of Caro's face.

"It's Rafe," she said, and started forward.

In the clearing, two people staggered across the forest floor supporting a third between them. All of them were crusted dark with dirt, slick with pus and blood. Their skin sloughed away, ruptured and broken. He didn't know how they were walking. They didn't look up at the sound of Lincoln's group approaching. They didn't even seem to notice, heads down and fixated on the ground in front of them. One foot in front of the other.

On the left, staggering gamely forward, was Rafe. He had the third man's arm drawn over his shoulders, clamped at the wrist. He didn't seem to notice that the man was already dead.

"Stop," the woman of Lincoln's group said, stepping forward to intercept them. She put a hand gently on Rafe's armored shoulder and he blinked awake, lifted his head and for the first time saw them there.

"The fog," he said, cracked and rough. "The fog came."

"I know," she said, and drew the dead man's arm away from him.

They didn't go any further. Freed of their burden, the two survivors swayed there on the spot like they didn't know what to do anymore. Only that purpose had been keeping them on -- only getting their comrade back home. Rafe sank to the ground slowly, jerkily, his limbs not entirely under conscious control.

Lincoln sat on his heels in front of his fellow trainee, his almost-friend. "You'll be all right," he said, though he knew even then that the words were a lie. "Just rest for a minute, okay?"

"Yes," Rafe said, and laid his head in the dirt.

Lincoln sat quietly beside him and Caro crouched down and tried to touch Rafe in a place where the fog hadn't boiled away his skin but there was no such place. So she laid her hand an inch above his cheek and cupped it like she was tipping his chin up and she said, "Shh. It's all right."

There was a funny stifled noise behind them and Lincoln twisted to see Nyko pulling a small knife back bloody. The man who had been walking with Rafe lay bonelessly limp on the ground, no longer gasping.

Nyko walked over to where they were crouched over Rafe and he held out the knife and said, "It is a mercy. There's no coming back from this."

"I know," Lincoln said quietly, while Caro said, "No, no --"

Nyko leaned forward and Lincoln leaned out to stop his hand. "I'll do it," he said, because Rafe deserved to die peacefully at the hand of someone who'd known him.

"You don't want to do this, boy," Nyko said. "Believe me. It won't make any difference to him, but it will wreck you."

Lincoln froze there, chewing on his lip, his hand closed over Nyko's on the haft of the knife. He watched Rafe silently struggle to breathe.

"I can make it quick," Nyko said, and Lincoln nodded and drew his hand away.

Nyko moved the hand and the knife and Lincoln kept his eyes fixed on Rafe's face. Rafe stared up at the canopy and his breath hissed and moaned until it didn't, until it slowed to a crawl and then stopped. His expression hadn't changed at all, and it didn't change in death. He looked so sightlessly pained, his mouth hanging open like he was about to scream.

Nyko stood and wiped his knife clean and said, "His fight is done."

Caro held out her hand to him and Lincoln took it and realized a moment later that he was crying, slick tears trailing down his cheeks, hard quiet sobs stealing his breath. It was no shame to grieve, so he didn't check them.

Nyko went to one of the other bodies and bent to retrieve something. When he straightened, Lincoln saw it was a horn. So, late or not -- they'd spent their lives in warning, anyway.

"This should be yours," he said, and pressed the horn into Lincoln's hands. "You comported yourself well, today."

"I ran," Lincoln said. He forced his words level and wiped at his face. 

"You kept your head and you offered your friend a great mercy," Nyko said. "That's all we can expect you to do."

Lincoln nodded and looked down at the horn, its surface chased dark with dirt and oil from many hands. The duty was his, now -- the responsibility was his.

"As soon as I smell the fog," he said. "Even at the cost of my own life."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... I guess that Lincoln one got away from me a little. It's probably long enough to post as a thing of its own, but that seems like too much work.
> 
> I might do an AU theme next.... Hogwarts AU? I've always wanted to do one of those.


	3. Hogwarts AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Octavia, ensemble
> 
> 2\. Murphy, Kane, Bellamy
> 
> 3\. Indra

1.

The Blake siblings sat together on the train, even though Bellamy was a third year at Hogwarts and had friends of his own that he could sit with. But he found the two of them a quiet corner and sat across from Octavia, bent over with his forearms resting on his knees, telling her about the things she was going to learn.

"It's going to be great, O," he said. "It's not like back at home -- they'll teach you how to transform things and make things dance and they'll teach you how to fly. You don't have to hide it."

"I still have to hide it at home, though," she said, her voice small. It had been drilled into her from an early age. They were special and nobody, nobody could know.

"Yes," Bellamy said gently. "But not here."

A parade of other students passed by the open doors of their compartment, many of them pausing to wave at Bellamy or to say something jovial about the start of term and Quidditch and showing those filthy Slytherins this year.

"Clarke is a Slytherin, isn't she?" Octavia said, when the last one had gone. "She's not filthy."

On the contrary, Clarke had always looked very neat and clean. Octavia was usually grubby from the playground or the street and their flat was a bit shabby and Bellamy always looked too tall for it, all loose flailing limbs and a sudden clumsiness that had struck him in the past year. (Their mom called it _puberty._ ) Clarke, when she came to visit, always looked small and graceful and shiny, like the neighbor's beautifully groomed Lhasa Apso.

"She is," Bellamy confirmed. "There's nothing wrong with Slytherin, or any of the houses. Okay? It doesn't matter where you're Sorted -- it'll be the right place for you."

Before long, they were told to change into their robes. Octavia's were plain and unadorned. Bellamy straightened his red and gold tie with a meticulous flick of his fingers as the train juddered to a halt.

"Good luck," he said. "I'll see you in the Hall."

Then he went off with a knot of his friends, laughing and jostling shoulders, and Octavia was left with the other first years, a largely silent group. Most of them looked as uneasy as she felt, which was some sort of comfort.

They were herded into boats that moved silently across the water of their own accord. A pair of boys sat in her boat but didn't say much of anything. One, thin and gangly with a pair of goggles around his neck that were very much not the regulation uniform, kept turning to look at her and then turning away with a jerk and a flush. His friend, a black-haired boy with a kind face, elbowed him and shot Octavia an apologetic smile.

Ahead of them, a sharp-featured boy tried to shove his seatmate overboard and into the water. They both shrieked when a pale tentacle lifted the other boy back into the safety of the boat.

_Be cool,_ Octavia told herself, keeping her chin up. She was a Blake, and she had survived years of running and hiding and she'd gone hungry and she'd once thrown a rat out the window with a bit of unconscious levitation magic. She could handle a few stupid boys and a giant squid.

#

Sometimes it paid to have a name early in the alphabet -- before she had time to be nervous, after she'd watched a few other students sit on the stool and place the hat gingerly on their heads, she was being called to the front. She was not large for her age, and she had to force her way to the front of the crowd with sharp elbows and quick feet.

"Octavia Blake," the hat said as soon as it settled on her brow. She startled and then recovered herself. She hadn't expected the thing to actually speak to her.

"Hello," she said, to be polite.

The hat chuckled. "I remember your brother," it said. "Very fierce, that one. As are you! The fire runs in the family, I see."

The hat paused, and then said, "Fierce, yes -- and quite loyal. You've suffered much, but you haven't let it change you. A strong sense of right and wrong, though perhaps you could allow a little more grey into your life, hmm? Loyal, and ambitious, too. You'll do whatever's necessary to achieve your goals."

This sounded like familiar rhetoric, so Octavia said, "I'd like to be with my brother, but if you want to put me in Slytherin that would be okay too. Clarke is there, and she's not bad, whatever anyone says."

The hat laughed again and said, "No, definitely a lion, this one," and aloud it shouts: "GRYFFINDOR!"

She found her brother's face in the crowd, red-faced and grinning, and she walked over to him on unsteady feet.

"Good job," he said to her, resting his hand briefly on his shoulder. 

"I didn't do anything," she protested, and Bellamy laughed and shoved her on down the row to an empty seat.

"Go meet your classmates," he said, and she stumbled into the mass of black-robed students, grabbing for a chair and accidentally pulling someone's hair, instead.

"Ow," said the boy reproachfully, rubbing at his head. It was the goggled boy from earlier, from her boat on the lake.

"Sorry," she said, chin up, trying for an air of _not really sorry._

The boy pulled out her chair for her, so apparently there were no hard feelings.

The Sorting went on in fits and starts -- some students barely had time to settle the hat on their heads, while the sharp-nosed boy who'd tried to toss his seatmate into the lake sat there for twelve minutes before the hat said, "HUFFLEPUFF!" in a dubious voice, like it wasn't even sure of its own decision.

After it all, the Headmaster stood up to say a few words, most of which were lost on her. He talked about the Forbidden Forest, which sounded ominous, and then about each student's glorious destiny, which was also strangely ominous.

"Headmaster Jaha," an older boy said, rolling his eyes. "You get used to him."

And then the tables filled with food, just like that -- like magic, Octavia thought, with a stupefied little giggle -- and everyone dug in, without comment. Talking casually amongst themselves, slapping their forks into tureens of potatoes and plates of turkey like it was nothing odd at all. Forget the obviously magical delivery system -- Octavia had never seen so much food in her life.

"Hey, eat," said the goggles boy. He introduced himself to her as Jasper.

"It's okay?" she said, before she could stop herself.

"Yeah, I think," said Jasper, before he was interrupted by the older boy who'd spoken before. 

"Bellamy's sister, right?" he said, and nodded. "Yeah, he was absolutely sure you'd end up here with us. Said you were brave as anything."

Octavia lifted her chin and tried to look brave, but she thought from the heat in her cheeks that she was blushing. There were just so many _people._

"I'm Miller," the boy said, his voice gentle. "And don't worry, okay? You belong here, now. We'll take care of you."

"Yeah," Jasper said, through a mouthful of potatoes.

Bellamy had said it would be like this, but she'd never really believed him. _A place where everyone's like us,_ he'd said. _You won't have to hide. We won't have to run. We're not freaks anymore, O. You'll see._

"I see," she said, and reached for the food. If she listened closely, she could hear her brother laughing from down the table.

Octavia closed her eyes and put a mouthful of potatoes on her tongue. They were so delicious, she could almost cry. She really could.

 

 

2.

When he is eighteen, Murphy takes a fall. He stands there still and shocked as the Wizengamot snaps his wand in half and forbids him from practicing magic ever again and he wonders if he'd known this was going to happen when he first stepped in the courtroom. If he'd ever been able to convince even himself that they might find him innocent.

No, he decides, probably not. He's never been smart but he's also not that stupid.

"Come on, son," a tall, dark-haired man says, putting a hand on his elbow and leading him out of the courtroom. He's an Auror, this man, and he'd introduced himself as Kane. Probably the one responsible for getting Murphy caught in the first place, although Aurors close ranks like swarming cockroaches, all _I Am Spartacus_ and never taking credit for anything. No one wants to draw attention to themselves, these days. A healthy attitude.

Murphy lets himself be led. The sound of his wand snapping still echoes in his ears.

"You should have taken the deal," Kane says, and Murphy doesn't look at his face but he sounds furious. His fingers like needles in Murphy's elbow, their steps just a little faster than comfortable as he steers them around the few gawkers and bored reporters in the lobby. The sentencing of a minor criminal heavy, some idiot gangster dumb enough to let the Aurors see his face, isn't of much interest to the presses. Now, if he'd talked --

"I would never have taken the deal," Murphy says, his voice dull even to his own ears.

"Fucking Hufflepuffs," Kane says, even though technically Murphy's not anything anymore, even though he dropped out of school three years ago. "We could have protected you. We could have gotten you a new life."

"I don't want a new life," Murphy says, which is a lie but it sounds good when he says it.

They were spellforgers and counterfeiters, and they took Murphy in even though he wasn't smart enough to help with anything but running packages and smashing faces. That's what Gustus had said to him, years ago when Murphy was just a kid, angry all the time and never sure where he'd find his next meal -- he'd said, "Kid, people like you the world has no use for. It's evolved past people like you, people who are quick with a curse and a fist and a knife. Yeah? What else are you good for?"

Nothing, he'd had to admit.

Kane takes him to a little clinical-white room where a serene-faced witch places a tracking spell on him that, she explains, is much like the spell that alerts the Ministry about underaged magic. Only it won't ever be lifted from him, not for the rest of his life.

"Why didn't they send me to Azkaban," Murphy says, when the witch is done and Kane is leading him out to the door and into the uncertain freedom of a life without magic.

"Too expensive to send a small fish like you to prison," Kane says, with a bit of pity coloring his voice. "Why would they? Prison is temporary. That spell is forever."

"I can get another wand."

"I wouldn't," Kane says.

They step out into the entrance hall and in front of them is a door to the street and a large fireplace where harried-looking people are stepping out, shaking soot from their clothes.

"Is there someplace you can go?" Kane asks, gesturing toward the fireplace. 

No, there's no place left. Not for him, the angry kid that no one could stand for too long. _Watch out,_ they'd said back at school. _This badger bites._ "I'll find my own way," he says, and wrenches his elbow from Kane's hand.

Kane stares at him for a moment, something heavy and sad in his face. "Sure," he says, and searches in his robe pockets for a moment. He presses a few things into Murphy's hands -- coins, a sachet of Floo powder, a card.

"Good luck, then," he says, and Murphy pushes his way out onto the street.

He's been here a thousand times before -- he knows this bustle of people better than he knows his own name or the house he grew up in. After all, his parents are dead and they have been for a long time. But he's always been a wizard. He doesn't know how to be anything else.

He wanders the streets for a while, looking into shop windows and restaurants and wondering idly about what he's going to do. It doesn't seem urgent yet, though. He has instincts for these kinds of things and he can worry about what he's going to do with his life after he's found out where he's going to sleep, what he's going to eat. He can't go back to the house he'd shared with Mbege, not after this. He'd kept their silence but now his name and his face were in the papers. No, it was time for the rats to go to ground.

He walks until it's dark and then a while longer, past the lamplights slowly flicking on, past the crowds gradually filtering out of the street until the mothers and children are gone, the shoppers and the business people are gone. Then it's only him and the night people, partiers out for another drink, late shift workers, others. People who can't or won't show their faces in the daytime.

Maybe he'll walk all night -- walk right out of this fucking place -- and maybe he would have but that his stomach began to growl. He checks his pockets, heavy with the jangle of coin. Kane had given him more than enough for a couple pub meals. Maybe one last night under a magical roof.

So he slips into the nearest place that still looks open. It's dim inside and smells of old grease and unwashed bodies. It's like a hundred places. Murphy's probably been there before -- who the fuck knows.

He orders a pint and a sandwich and sits there with his head down, listening. Feeling for that faint electricity in the air, absorbing the casual talk of people who take magic for granted. He'd been like that, not so long ago. He'd been born into this world and had never known anything else.

His muggleborn classmates, back at school -- he'd poked fun at them for being ignorant, for not knowing anything about the world they found themselves in. But he'll be so much worse off, this way. After all, they'd gained a sense -- everything they'd learned before still applied, it was only that now they had this new thing that was so much more. But Murphy's not gained a thing. He's only lost, only had something taken from him. It's like being stripped of his sight or the sensation in his fingers.

He doesn't know the first thing about living without magic. He won't even be able to feed himself.

"Fucking useless," he says aloud, then flushes red at the back of his neck. He looks around to see if anyone's noticed, but they're all absorbed in their own troubles.

He sits there for a while longer and orders another pint. The crowd has begun to thin out. It's just Murphy and a table of three over at the window. They look too wasted to leave this place under their own power. There's a man and a woman, up at the bar, and a figure in a ballcap and a long coat who's been there nearly as long as Murphy has. That's the one who's caught his eye. That's the one who's pinged his sense of danger, sharp as it's ever been. He developed that sense from necessity as a child in his mother's house and he trusts it implicitly.

He finishes his beer and orders another. When it comes, he picks it up and moves to the bar, settling in a bit down from the figure in the hat and the coat. He looks for exits and things that could be used as weapons, in a pinch. He looks sidelong down the bar, looking at the face beneath the hat.

"Bellamy," he says, startled.

"Hey, Murphy," Bellamy says, and adjusts the brim of his hat. He looks uncomfortable wearing it -- it's as transparent a disguise as a pair of groucho glasses.

He doesn't look surprised to see Murphy. He looks bored, like he's been waiting for something that took a long time coming.

"What are you doing here?" Murphy says, lightly prodding. Testing a hypothesis.

"Waiting for you," Bellamy says.

Murphy tilts his glass toward Bellamy in a little toast and then takes a long swallow, awarding himself a mental five points. Gold star.

"Here I am," he says, but doesn't go on after that. He folds his hands around his glass and waits for Bellamy to say his piece.

It takes a while for him to get to the point. The man and woman down the bar pay their tab and leave. The table by the window erupts in raucous laughter.

"I heard about what happened to you today," Bellamy says. "Sorry to hear it."

Murphy shrugs, although the sound of his wand snapping is still echoing in his ears. "I'm alive. I'm not in jail."

"Might as well be," Bellamy says, which is pretty much true, so Murphy says nothing.

Bellamy tilts his head to look at Murphy, square-on for the first time that evening. It makes Murphy uncomfortable, itchy in his skin. He's gotten used to being unimportant and unseen. Oftentimes his life depended on it.

"You were a mouthy little shit, back at school," Bellamy says. "What happened?"

"Oh, you like my mouth?" Murphy says, instead of answering. There's too many answers to that question.

Bellamy snorts and signals the barman. He pays his own tab and Murphy's, too.

"Come on," he says, stepping down from his stool.

Nope, nope nope nope, Murphy's instincts say. Not going with that one.

"We're moving so fast, Mr Blake," he says, in a sickly little falsetto. "How scandalous."

Bellamy lifts his eyebrows but doesn't bother giving that a response. He walks briskly down past the table of drunks by the window and pushes through the door.

_What now,_ Murphy thinks, and then makes a quick decision. He gets up and follows.

Bellamy leads him a ways down the street, to a little corner nook where shadows cut through the lamplight and they're sheltered from the eyes of people casually walking the street. It's the sort of place you might go to knife someone, or to hire a prostitute. Murphy curls his lip and steps into the shadows. Why be picky? It's not like he has something to protect, anymore. Things are over for him.

"I'm part of a particular group of people," Bellamy says, without further prevarication. He has the shifty look of a man with other things on his mind. "And I think we could help each other."

"Really," Murphy says, and snorts. "And what is it that I'm bringing to the table? My sterling personality?"

"Your knowledge," Bellamy says. "You know people worth knowing, don't you? You know how they tick."

"I'm not going to give anyone up."

"They did it to you first," Bellamy says, very softly.

And that's true enough.

A slow flush of hate is creeping through him, buzzing through his fingertips. Murphy bites his cheek until it bleeds. Who is he angry with, anyway? Bellamy? Mbege? The rest of them?

Or maybe only himself.

"Besides, everyone says you're a fucking fine duelist," Bellamy says, in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood.

Murphy raises his arms, fingers spread and so obviously empty -- _look, Ma, it's not in my pockets._ "Used to be."

"Could still be," Bellamy says, and then he does something unusual.

He raises his hand, as empty as Murphy's. He makes a noiseless little snapping motion and a light flickers at his fingertips, warm and bright. Like a candleflame, but utterly still. Murphy stares, transfixed. There's no wand in Bellamy's hands. He'd said no words, made no signs.

"There's other ways than what we've been taught," Bellamy says.

"How? How did you--"

"Come with me and I'll tell you everything," Bellamy says.

"They wouldn't know," Murphy says, an urgency in his voice that he can't suppress. "The Ministry? They wouldn't know?"

"They can't track this." Bellamy moves his fingers apart, and the little light snuffs out.

Murphy's mouth works, but he says nothing. He's still staring at the place where the light had been, its afterimage purple and bright when he blinks.

"So, let's talk," Bellamy says.

"Yeah," Murphy says, unsticking his lips with difficulty. His throat suddenly so dry. "Yeah, I guess we'd better talk."

 

 

3.

Most Hogwarts professors were once students there themselves, which gives them a certain sort of perspective. They have all these fond memories of meals in the Great Hall, house cups won and lost, long nights studying in the library. It makes them nostalgic and fond, mostly, or else it makes them snippy and irritable, like Byrne.

No one knows where Professor Indra went to school when she was young, although several students have hypothesized that Professor Indra was never young. She hatched fully-formed from the earth with a wand in one hand and a broomstick in the other, her mouth parted to say _ten points from Gryffindor._

"Welcome back, Indra," Headmaster Jaha says with his usual breathy enthusiasm. Jaha is a good man, and an excellent wizard. He's also a bit off his rocker, which at this point seems to be a requirement for the post of Headmaster.

"Thelonius," Indra says, dipping her chin in a scant nod.

The sorting goes by in a blur, this year -- a bunch of small frightened children psychoanalyzed by a hat. Indra's always found this a bit ill-advised, but then, Hogwarts has been a school for a long time. It's had time for ridiculous old eccentricities to turn into celebrated traditions.

On her right side, Nurse Griffin applauds loudly whenever a child is sorted into Ravenclaw. Professors aren't supposed to have house loyalties, but of course that's generally a lost cause. Nurse Griffin had kept a stiff lip about it all, but she'd been terribly disappointed when her only daughter was sorted into Slytherin.

"Looking forward to a new term, Indra?" Sinclair says brightly, because he's never really believed her when she says she doesn't want to talk. Which she says routinely, at least once a term. She's already said it once today, in fact.

"I always look forward to terrorizing children," she says, and neatly pulls the spine from her roasted fish.

#

The first day of classes, Indra has Gryffindor and Slytherin first years after lunch. A perfect opportunity to make a lasting impression, Sinclair said the previous day. They'd been having tea together -- or rather, Indra had been drinking tea alone until he dragged his armchair close to hers. _Think about it, Indra -- all those fresh young minds to mold!_

Indra paces in front of her class like a tiger. "Pay close attention, or this could be the last class you ever attend," she snaps. Spines straighten on cue in the front row, dozens of scared young kids with ink-spotted hands and no idea yet about proper shorthand, all of them afraid to so much as blink lest they miss her next words.

Yes, the first class of the term is always all right.

"All right, then, slowly now," she says, and moves away from the boxes at her back. The students sidle over like they're expecting fangs and claws, though she'd already told them about how their creature's only natural defense mechanism is its disarming helplessness.

"Slowly," she says again, sharply, as the first of the girls squeals and makes a break for the boxes.

She'd heard there was a teacher once who'd spent months on flobberworms. Maybe he'd been onto something, that man.

#

"How are they doing, so far?" Sinclair asks at dinnertime. One of his students passes and waves and he returns the wave so enthusiastically he nearly overturns his plate.

"They're... energetic," Indra says, dryly.

"Don't worry," Sinclair says, smiling. "We'll beat that bright-eyed enthusiasm out of them yet."

"I suppose so," she says.

Sinclair clinks his goblet with hers and proposes a toast to a new year of gainful employment. Out on the floor of the Great Hall, someone's started a food fight at the Hufflepuff table and everyone's shouting and tossing food indiscriminately, more onto the floor than onto each other. 

"My God," Sinclair says. "What appalling aim. Are they witches or aren't they?"

A little further down the table, Headmaster Jaha observes the chaos with a beatific smile, resting his chin on his steepled fingers.

"To this year and the next," Indra says, and clinks her glass against Sinclair's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was fun! I could write an entire novel-length treatment of the #2 Murphy segment... I try to be even-handed, but it's true, Murphy is my favorite.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure why I made Indra and Sinclair friends, but I think it's because Indra is awesome and also I have lingering BSG Felix Gaeta-related sadness.
> 
> Anyway, I don't know that you'll see anything more from me in this fandom -- I like the characters very much, but it feels a bit like shouting soundlessly into the void. Who knows.


End file.
